Due uomini e una dote

It is easy to see why i had never heard of this movie before because it is so bad and it's hard to see a cast this great in a movie so bad. Hard to believe this was directed by Mike Nichols and stars Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. The movie is set in the 1920's in which there is a law that saw you cannot take a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. Beatty is in love with Stockard Channing and has Nicholson get married to her and the movie doesn't make it clear why Beatty didn't marry her in the first place. Beatty is going to pose as her brother and they are going to California. It then turns out that both of them are only interested in her money and she isn't too happy about that. The movie is pretty bad and this movie deserves to be unknown.

Mike Nichols who directed The Fortune would not direct a feature film again until Silkwood in 1983. He was obviously hurt by the critical and commercial failure of this film.

Warren Beatty should realise that he is just not cut out for a certain style of comedy. This film was inspired by the success of the scatterbrained homage to the 1930s comedies, What's up Doc and the crime caper The Sting.

It is a zany screwball comedy set in the 1920s. Warren Beatty is a sleazy, handsome, married con man who in an attempt to sidestep a piece of legislation where you cannot take an unmarried woman across a state line, gets Jack Nicholson his dim witted accomplice to marry an heiress (Stockard Channing) and fly out to California so Beatty can have his wicked ways with her.

However Nicholson takes a shine to Channing and keeps getting in the way and wants Channing for himself rather let Beatty just have her.

When Channing learns that the boys are just after her fortune she tells them that she will give it away to charity. They now plan to murder her for her money but every attempt to knock her off ends up in disaster.

Nicholson and Beatty are just too incompetent to succeed with their plan. Nicholson's character probably inspired by all of The Three Stooges keeps drawing attention to himself when the trio are supposed to be in California incognito as Channing has run away from her wealthy family. For example, there is a bizarre scene on the plane where he ends up in the outside of the plane knocking on the window and looking demented.

The film is too messy and the humour feels forced, it looks like a series of sketches that just fly by you without even raising a smile in most instances.

It is a rarely shown and barely known film. I stumbled across it on television and did not know that Beatty and Nicholson appeared together prior to the film Reds.

When I read about "Silkwood" in a movie encyclopedia, the caption said that Mike Nichols's career had come to a halt eight years earlier with "The Fortune". Watching the latter, I laughed but also felt like the movie was a little bit low for the director of "The Graduate" and "Catch-22". Portraying uptight Warren Beatty and over-conspicuous Jack Nicholson transporting Stockard Channing to California for what were deemed immoral purposes by the Mann Act in the 1920s, it seems like much of the flick consists of Beatty getting angry at Nicholson for not taking their predicament too seriously. But the last twenty minutes were a hoot, I will say that.

So, this may be Mike Nichols's only movie that you sit around in your underwear and watch. I gotta pity the characters for having a landlady like the one portrayed in the movie. Also starring Scatman Crothers (that's right, the cook from "The Shining") and a very young Christopher Guest.

Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Stockard Channing are at their comedic best in this movie. It's kind of one of those goofy 'buddy' movies where Nicholson and Beatty play off each other marvelously with Channing thrown into a great ditzy role. If you want to see comedy acting at its finest...

Mike Nichols' last good film that I'm sure bombed at the time. Stockard Channing almost steals the show as the young heiress, Warren Beatty is perfectly cast, and Nicholson is hilarious without doing much (great hair). There were a lot of good films in the 70's and this should have been included on most lists.

A 7 out of 10. Best performance = Jack Nicholson. There are scenes that fall flat, but the ones that work make it worthwhile. Great costumes and art-set direction as well. It's hard to imagine these two actors (Beatty & Nicholson) playing the characters they did in REDS six years later after playing these buffoons. Give it a shot.